


break an egg!

by akikoe



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bad Cooking, Breakfast, Cooking, Does it Even Sound Natural Anymore, Domestic, Eggs, Gen, Miya Atsumu Should be Banned From the Kitchen, Miya Atsumu is a Little Shit, Miya Osamu is So Done, No Houses Were Harmed in the Making of This Fic, Not Beta Read, Or Does it Sound Like a Joke, POV Miya Osamu, Pro Volleyball Player Miya Atsumu, Sibling Bonding, Slang, Their Kansai Dialect was a Struggle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26083081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akikoe/pseuds/akikoe
Summary: Osamu is woken up at five in the morning to the sound of something frying in the kitchen.miya atsumu breaks eggs. miya osamu lives in perpetual fear of their apartment burning down.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu
Comments: 12
Kudos: 128





	break an egg!

**IT BEGINS WITH** **NOTHING** out of the ordinary, over breakfast cooking cheerfully on the stove and Miya Osamu three seconds away from kicking his twin brother to the other side of Japan.

(He refrains from doing so—an incredible feat in itself.)

“I was gonna use that egg,” he says, fighting to keep his voice even. He pinches the bridge of his nose to ward off an inevitably oncoming headache. “I  _ told _ ya.  _ Last night _ .”

“Ain’t nothing I can do now,” Atsumu says with a shrug. “It’s already out of the shell.”

It  _ is _ out of the shell. Which is precisely the problem.

Atsumu flips the egg, accidentally breaking the yolk in the process. Osamu takes a deep breath to prevent himself from ousting his disaster of a brother from the kitchen and taking over the stove. Something smells vaguely burnt, and right on cue, two slices of bread spring out of the toaster, nearly blackened.

Atsumu doesn’t even spare his ruined toast a glance. “Want some?”

“Definitely not.”

Atsumu, apparently deciding that his egg is sufficiently cooked, turns off the stove. He plonks his toast on a plate, the blackened edges falling apart in ashy crumbs, and cuts the egg in half with his spatula, sliding half on each slice of toast.

It looks rather toxic. Osamu stares. (He wouldn’t eat that if he were  _ paid _ to do it. He’s seen better things in the waste bins out the back of his stall.)

“Ya sure you don’t want any?” Atsumu asks, waving his plate in front of Osamu’s eyes. “Think of it as me making up for using the last egg.”

There is nothing that could make up for him using the last egg. Osamu was going to make  _ tamagoyaki _ with it, and he’d been looking forward to that all night long—only to be met with this tragedy of a breakfast, and his brother’s smug face, as if he’d cooked a three-course-meal rather than two slices of burned toast and a near-ruined egg.

He snatches the plate from Atsumu. “Give it ‘ere.”

“You can thank me later—”

Osamu promptly dumps the entirety of Atsumu’s breakfast in the bin. He brushes the crumbs from his hands.

(He rather thinks Atsumu should thank  _ him _ , for saving him from otherwise assured food poisoning.)

Atsumu gapes. “That—that was my  _ breakfast _ —”

Osamu ignores him. He needs to eat something.

There’s a good chance that Atsumu’s used up the last of the bread as well as the last egg, so that’s out of the breakfast equation. Osamu’s got half a mind to just pick something up from the convenience store for both of them, but he chides himself out of it. Both of them have careers that depend on the seasons and peoples’ fluctuating cycles of interest—they may as well save money while they can.

Osamu pushes past his brother to the rice cooker, where he’s greeted by a waft of hot steam hitting him in the face. Thank goodness he’d had the foresight to leave it on overnight.

They’ve got pickled  _ daikon _ , and he’s pretty sure that there’s miso as well. That works; he can make something half decent. He peruses the fridge and finds silken tofu, leftover grilled salmon, and  _ furikake _ .

“Want actual breakfast?” he asks Atsumu.

His twin brother gives him an eyeroll, but the smile tugging at the edge of his lips betrays him. “Whatever,” he says.

Osamu pulls out a pot and gets to work.

Cooking calms him—there’s something about the clean cut of a knife; the methodical choosing, examining, matching flavours and nutritional profiles. He doesn’t need to think too hard about it. His hands move on their own accord.

He turns to Atsumu while he mixes miso in a ladle with a small amount of  _ dashi _ . “You’d better buy a carton of eggs on the way home.”

“What kind?”

“The large ones. Free-range. And while yer at it, you can pick up some spring onion.”

Atsumu gives him a theatrical, resigned sigh, but dutifully types something on his phone, presumably adding the groceries to his to-do list.

This is comfortable—breakfast in the morning before they head off on their separate paths, and they’d used to bet on who would be happier by the end of the day, but they’ve gotten past it. The competition is more of a given now, underlying in the background with no need to draw attention to it. It’s something to gloat over when one of them comes back home particularly dejected, sometimes with tears threatening to spill, before the other pulls themself back together and turns on the television, and they watch old movies under blankets with a few boxes of takeout.

Osamu tastes the miso soup, decides that it’s delicious, then adds in the tofu, cutting it into even cubes. The salmon is reheating, wrapped in foil in the toaster oven, so he should start assembling the meal now.

He scoops rice into two bowls—a larger serving for Atsumu, because he always complains that he’s starving after practice, with extra  _ furikake _ on top. It would be nice if there was  _ tamagoyaki _ to go with—but Osamu lets the issue go with the long-suffering patience of one who’s had to deal with Atsumu for far too many years.

(Honestly, he deserves an award. Maybe multiple.)

“Are ya nervous?” he asks Atsumu. He adds the pickled  _ daikon _ on top of the rice, and spots a box of cherry tomatoes as he moves to put the pickles away. He washes them so that he can add those to their breakfast.

Atsumu scoffs. “‘Bout what?”

Osamu gives him a pointed look. Really, Atsumu should know better than to try and act all careless and flippant with him—there hasn’t been a single instance where Osamu’s been fooled, and he isn’t about to break that streak after twenty-three years.

Atsumu sighs, sitting down at the breakfast table. He rests his head on his palm; the perfect image of a five-year-old waiting impatiently for his breakfast. “I dunno,” he admits. “Feel like I should be nervous. It’s the national team, after all. But if I’m not—that just means I’m trash, right?”

“Like yer not already trash—”

“Shut up.”

Osamu presses his lips together to suppress his smile and dries the cherry tomatoes. He cuts them in half and arranges them next to the pickles. “Think you’ll make it? Even against Kageyama?”

“Sure,” Atsumu says immediately, assuredly. The confidence in his voice isn’t hollow. This time, Osamu doesn’t hide his smile.

“I think you’ll make it too,” he says.

Atsumu goes silent.

The toaster oven chimes, announcing that the salmon is ready, and Osamu pulls out the tray with a clean dishcloth. He adds the fish to the bowls with his chopsticks, takes a second to admire his work, then ladles the miso soup into two lacquer bowls before sliding them on the table.

“Breakfast,” he announces. “ _ Edible _ breakfast.”

“Mine  _ was _ edible.”

“For cockroaches, maybe.”

Atsumu doesn’t tell him to shut up this time—only gives him a very impressive side-eye. (He must’ve learned that from Sakusa. From what he’s heard and seen, Sakusa seems like the type of person to do a lot of side-eyeing.)

Still, he eats, and Osamu watches as the crease between his brother's brows softens. It’s another thing he loves about cooking—the visible satisfaction on peoples’ faces, that happiness that keeps them coming back for more, like something's been lifted off their shoulders. He’s got the ability to lessen their strain, for even just a little while, but it’s all he needs to do.

Atsumu continues eating in silence, and when he’s finished, he collects Osamu’s bowl, washing both at the sink. Osamu gets his jacket and pulls on his cap. Atsumu fills up a water bottle and adds it to his gym bag.

“See ya,” Osamu says, and Atsumu responds with a wide grin and a wave of his hand.

They go their separate ways.

* * *

Osamu pretends to ignore the three cartons of eggs in the fridge when he gets home—he had asked for  _ one _ —and succeeds for approximately two hours, before his curiosity gets the better of him.

“What’s with the eggs?” he asks over his  udon .

Atsumu shrugs. “They were on sale.”

“We don't need three boxes.”

“Yes, we do.”

“We don't.”

Atsumu picks up a few strands of noodles with his chopsticks, ignoring the fact that half of them slide out of his grasp. They land gracelessly back in the soup. By some miracle, nothing spatters on to his shirt. “I need the protein.”

“We have chicken," Osamu points out. "And pork. And salmon. And tofu. And soybeans. And—”

Atsumu makes a point of slurping his  udon as loudly as he can.

Osamu sits back in his chair and eats his noodles. (Why is it that Atsumu, despite being older, chooses to act perpetually like he's in primary school?)

“I hope ya thought of a way to use ‘em,” he says tiredly.

Atsumu drains his soup and gives him an innocent stare. “‘Course.”

Mentally, Osamu makes a reminder to himself that they’ll be having  _ omurice _ for the next few days.

* * *

Osamu is woken up at five in the morning to the sound of something frying in the kitchen.

Immediately, he’s jolted into full alertness. He and Atsumu live alone, and it’s sure as hell not him out there cooking.

That leaves two possibilities—either a burglar has decided to make themselves breakfast, or Atsumu is in the kitchen. Both are equally dangerous situations.

Osamu slides on his slippers so quickly that he gets them the wrong way around—he doesn’t have time to correct them. There are far more pressing matters at hand, so he slams open the door and tears down the hallway to the kitchen.

Atsumu is standing before the stove.

He barely has time to register the sight before Atsumu’s  _ in his face _ , way too close to see clearly, and then he’s getting shoved backwards so quickly that it’s a miracle that he doesn’t fall over.

“I’m busy,” Atsumu says firmly. “Outta the kitchen.”

“That’s—I’m—the apartment is gonna _ burn down _ ,” he says, waving his hands for emphasis. He’s sure he looks half-mad right now, with his hair still rumpled from sleep, but he’s just woken up to a near heart attack, so he’s going to cut himself some slack. “‘Tsumu, we haven’t finished paying it off.”

“It ain’t gonna burn,” his brother insists. “Shoo.”

Osamu’s brain whirls, trying to think of a way to get Atsumu out of the kitchen. “I need breakfast.”

“I made a sandwich.”

Osamu turns. Sure enough, there’s a sandwich sitting on the table, and out of kindness, Osamu does not mention the fact that it’s comprised of literally a singular piece of ham and some mayonnaise. It’s quite possibly the most dejected-looking sandwich he’s ever seen in his life.

“Ah—thanks,” he says.

He turns around and shuffles to the bathroom to get himself ready for the day.

(Maybe by the time he comes out, the sandwich will have disappeared, and Atsumu will be out of the kitchen, and this will all have been just some weird nightmare.)

* * *

They, unexpectedly, do  _ not _ need to solely eat some variation of egg and rice for the next two weeks, because, for some mysterious reason, they’re back down to exactly one carton of eggs in the fridge.

Atsumu picks up a pork cutlet with his chopsticks and waves it in Osamu’s face. “Wasn’t me.”

“We’re literally the only two people in this apartment. If ya didn’t use the eggs, who did?”

“Dunno. But it wasn’t me,” Atsumu insists. “I dunno what’s happened to ‘em.”

Osamu suppresses a sigh and accepts the fact that his brother is a pathological liar.

* * *

Miya Osamu is concerned, for reasons that can be briefly summarized into three main points:

Firstly—Atsumu is waking up every morning at some ungodly hour like his life depends on it. Gone are the days where Osamu would have to throw pillows in his face or snatch the blanket from his body to wake him up. Instead, he’s the one getting woken up now, and it’s usually by some weird clattering sound in the kitchen.

Which brings him to his second cause of concern—Atsumu is spending an unsettling amount of time in the kitchen these days. He had never used to spend so many hours there, and Osamu prays that whatever gods have, for now, prevented the apartment from burning down, continue to do their job.

His third and final point of concern is that their egg supply is quickly dwindling.

It doesn’t seem humanly possible to have eaten nearly three cartons of eggs between the two of them in less than a week, so Osamu’s hypothesis is this:

Atsumu is waking up early in the morning to cook eggs.

There’s no other explanation for it. Everything adds up. The only other question Osamu has is  _ why _ .

He pads down to the kitchen in his socks, careful not to make too much noise, and peeks around the wall. Atsumu’s back is to him, so he can’t see properly what his brother’s doing, but he can see that he’s using the stove, and from the sounds of it, he’s frying something.

Atsumu turns around, and he ducks back behind the wall. He holds his breath.

Seconds pass, then minutes, and Osamu decides that there’s nothing else for him to see, so he’s about to go back to his room—

“Already awake?”

There’s the automatic guilt that rushes through him, like he’d gotten caught with his hand inside the metaphorical cookie jar. He has to remind himself that he hasn’t done anything wrong before he straightens up and meets his brother’s eyes.

“Back at ya,” he says. “What’s with the early morning kitchen use?”

Atsumu doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, a slow, smug grin spreads across his face, the kind that he usually has after he’s mastered some new attack, where his eyes are hooded and his hair casts a shadow over his face and usually makes Osamu want to throw a chair at him.

“Got something to tell ya,” he says. “Brushed yer teeth yet?”

Osamu frowns, but nods. Despite the fact that he’s known Atsumu for his entire life, he has no idea where this conversation is going. Unless—

“Nationals,” he realises aloud, at the same time Atsumu grins and declares, “I made the national team!”

The words ring in his ears for a little while, and he feels a smile tugging at his lips, bright and unbidden and spilling off him in a great wave of lightness and  _ pride _ .

“Good job,” he says. It doesn’t even begin to describe the brimming joy he feels for his brother. He holds his hand out for a fist bump, and Atsumu happily obliges.

“Right?” he says, the grin on his face growing wider. “I’m so freaking pumped. Let’s celebrate.”

“And get a meal? Sure. Where?”

“Here’s fine.”

“Here… ya want me to cook something?” Osamu asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Actually,” Atsumu says, gesturing towards the kitchen, “I made breakfast.”

The whiplash between pride and horror threatens to short-circuit his brain. Osamu mentally prepares himself for the worst. The stove to be ruined—maybe even completely  _ gone _ , somehow—everything to be scorched; the kitchen bench is probably on fire.

He is greeted by none of these.

Instead, two bowls lie on the kitchen bench, filled with rice, pickles,  _ furikake _ , and the most perfect rolls of  _ tamagoyaki _ he’s ever seen.

He blinks. Rubs his eyes.

When he opens them, the two bowls are still there.

“‘Tsumu, I think I’m still asleep.”

“Shut up.” Atsumu crosses his arms, satisfaction plastered all over his face, and gestures for Osamu to take a bowl. “Just eat.”

Osamu eats.

The  _ tamagoyaki _ is fluffy and perfectly seasoned, and when he eats it with the piping hot rice and crunchy pickles, he can’t help but smile. “How’d ya know I wanted  _ tamagoyaki _ ?”

“I’m tellin’ ya, it’s telepathy.”

Osamu risks a glance around the kitchen, to where the bench is admittedly a bit messy, but hey, he can’t have everything in the world. Nothing is on fire, and he’s got a delicious breakfast, and really, that’s enough.

Atsumu makes an appreciative noise as he shovels more rice into his mouth. “It’s ‘cause of the ingredients we had in the pantry,” he admits. “All for  _ tamagoyaki _ . Also, I’m blessed with incredible perceptive skills.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“Is the egg good?”

“It’s really good.”

If it’s possible, the grin on Atsumu’s face grows even wider, and he tilts his chin up proudly. “Watch out. I’m gonna be better than ya at cooking and take over the stall one day.”

“What about volleyball?”

“I’ll still play,” Atsumu answers automatically, then frowns. “I’ll do both.”

Osamu laughs, the kind that comes from his chest and bubbles up spontaneously. His brother’s hunger to do things greater than himself, that drive that pushes Atsumu ever higher, is something that even Osamu finds himself getting dragged along into, and he’s not complaining. It’s a slipstream, addicting and fast-paced and too rapid to notice until it’s too late to escape, and he’s in for the entire ride.

“Sure,” he says. “I’ll look forward to it.”

(He makes a mental reminder to pick up another carton of eggs.)

**Author's Note:**

> yikes that was my first time writing the twins,, actually my first time writing a non-heroaca fic and it's barely edited but I will never be over haikyuu so I tried to channel my love into this fic and! I hope it became readable! if you liked it, a kudos and/or comment would absolutely make my day 💖
> 
> be friends with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/akikoe14) or [tumblr](https://akikoe14.tumblr.com/)!


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